Cpanel Help

General Info.
All accounts come with our control account cpanel. You can access your control panel at: http://www.yourdomain.com/cpanel/ or you may use, http://your ip adderss/cpanel/ If using http://www.yourdomain.com/cpanel/ (This will not be active until your domain has been transferred to our nameservers.) You will be asked to enter your user / pass to gain access to your configuration. The control panel is pretty much self explanatory however a little information on the usage of each section is included below if you get confused along the way:
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FTP Accounts
Accounts Used for managing access accounts to your web space. The creation of an FTP account will allow users to log into a sub directory from your main account without gaining access to your main accounts. Sessions show any users that are currently logged into your domain. Settings allow you to modify access to your anonymous FTP site. More info on anonymous FTP usage.
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CGI
We have numerous customizable cgi scripts that have been pre-installed on the server for you to use with your own account. The only thing you'll need to do is select the script you are interested in using, select the colors, style etc., and click the "Make HTML" button. You can then paste the HTML output into any of your HTML files to use that system cgi program. To see what software can be installed using our cpanel, check our demo.
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Java
System Java works the exact same as cgi, see above for usage.
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Web Page Protection
Web page protection is used to limit access to any directory to users who enter a user/pass combo. To protect a directory within your account:
1.) Click on that dir.
2.) Enter a user / pass for access
3.) Click add. You can add as many users as you wish to this file. This protection is for resources accessed via the WEB only, this will not create an FTP user.
Do not use this if you are also using FrontPage. It is not compatible. Instead, use the security controls within FrontPage itself.
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E-MAIL
E-mail control panel allows instant creation of e-mail POP3, forwards, and aliases. A POP3 account is a stand alone incoming e-mail account. if you create u: john p: doe it all mail sent to john@domain.com will be routed to the joe e-mail account. The user joe can then check this mail by login into mail.domain.com using his user name and password. REMEMBER: all user names automatically have a determined amount of letters of the domain name appended to the beginning of the user name. So if john was a another domain user the user would use mail.somedomain.net as his incoming e-mail server and use powerjohn as his log in name to retrieve mail sent to john@homepage.net An alias sends mail sent to one address to another POP3 account within your domain. For example if our recently created john account was going to receive all mail sent to sales@anyname.net we would setup sales as an alias to john. Note: by default all names not configured to the root account. So if you sent a message to testl@domain.com it would be sent to your main root account unless you had set it up as an alias, forward or POP3. A forward account sends mail sent to user@domain.com to an address completely out of your domain. For example if john had an AOl account and wanted to check all his mail there you could setup john to forward to john3435@aol.com.
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Access Stats
Provides access to many different programs that will analyze your access logs and show you more information about your web sites traffic.
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Password
Allows you to change your main accounts password. A good suggestion is to change this password at least once a month.
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File Manager
Allows you to modify the files in your web site in real-time via a web based interface. You can perform many commands such as chmod as well as actually edit the file and save it directly to the web server.
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Java Chat
Allows you to access your personal java chat server and supplies the code for you to use the product on your own site.
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Handlers / Types
You will probably never need to use this portion of your control panel. A MIME type is basically what tells the web server that a .html document is a web page, and that a .gif doc is a gif image etc. If you would like to configure a custom MIME type such as making .pictures a gif image file you would enter it here.
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Error Editor
This section lets you customize the errors that your users will see instead of the generic server errors. You could setup a 404 page to redirect users to your main web site instead ofthe default dead document.
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SSL

What is SSL?
Secure Socket Layers provide a means for submitting encrypted data via the web. SSL works based upon a public key / certificate system. As data is transmitted it is encrypted into 40 bit encryption and the web server then decrypts the data once it is transmitted. In the rare occasion that the data was stolen during the transmission process the only data that they would be would be encrypted which means that viewing it would show nothing but letters, numbers, and symbols randomly mixed.
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How does SSL work?
In order for this process to work without many warning messages from IE and Netscape about possible security hazards a certificate must be obtained from a trusted source. A certificate is only good for one domain name.
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How do I add this feature?
If you would like to enable SSL on your account contact MyPagesOnline and ask to take advantage of this feature. If you would like to have your own certificate installed so that customers can navigate your site via https://www.yourdomain.com you will have to purchase your own certificate and have us generate a key request and install it on the server. We recommend using Thawte for this purpose. Once you have the key from thawte, we will install it for you.
(Please note there is a $50.00 one time fee to install your Personal SSL Certificate.)
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SSI

What is SSI?
Server Side Includes
When using a UNIX system it is sometimes necessary to enable certain HTML files executable for the purpose of using SSI. Server Side Includes are often used to run a cgi script. An include is called with an example such as this: After you insert your include, you must mark the HTML file as executable so the server will parse the file. This is done using one of two options.
1.) Renaming the file to .shtml: On our server any file name .shtml will be parsed. So instead of having an index.html file, you would name it index.shtml. This is the easiest way of enabling includes.
2.) CHMODing the file to 777: With CHMOD 777 you can also mark a file as executable. It is important to only make the files which you want parsed executable. This poses certain security issues, as well as a strain on our resources, as the processor has to work harder to parse a file.
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Reasons for Using SSI
SSI is often used to include something into an HTML page. You can insert the contents of one HTML page into another page. An example of a practical usage for this would be to include your e-mail address at the bottom of each page. If you do this as an include, then when your e-mail address changes, you will only have to update it on one page and not your entire web site. Another usage is to call cgi scripts into action. Many counters, clocks, and other scripts are called using SSI. The command used will most likely be provided in the documentation of your cgi script.
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CGI

What is CGI?
CGI, Common Gateway Interface, includes programs that run on the server to enhance the quality and functionality of a web site. There are many resources on-line that allow the downloading of free cgi scripts. ( For instance: http://www.worldwidemart.com/scripts/ )or ( http://cgi.resourceindex.com/Programs_and_Scripts/ )
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Do you allow CGI to run on your servers?
We do allow running of cgi scripts on the servers, however they must conform to our acceptable server resource usage policy. If we deem that a script is using an excessive amount of server resources, it will be disabled.
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Whats the correct path to perl?
Before a cgi script will work certain modifications must be made to them. Certain paths must be specified in some scripts. After the "#" in the first line of the perl script, the path to perl must be specified. /usr/bin/perl should suffice for this path. Below is a printout of a "whereis perl" from our system.perl: /usr/bin/perl
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What is the path to send mail?
Another program that needs to be specified in many scripts is sendmail. This is located at /usr/lib/sendmail
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What is the exact physical path to your root directory on the webserver?
The path to your root directory is: /home/username/ Obviously, substitute "username" with the login you were assigned when you first received your account details. Also, keep in mind that when you configure your CGI, that your /public_html is included in your path. For instance, if you have a guestbook.pl script in your /cgi-bin, the exact physical path to that file is: /home/username/public_html/cgi-bin/guestbook.pl
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Why doesn't my CGI work?
Make sure when you upload the CGI file DO NOT upload in binary mode, instead use ASCII mode. Uploading in binary will cause the server not to recognize the scripts as executables. Most FTP clients will upload .pl or .cgi files in binary mode by default so you will need to change this. You will need to upload the scripts into your cgi-bin directory for security reasons, however they will execute from anywhere within your account. The last step is to set the file permissions. This is otherwise known as chmoding and can be done from most FTP clients. For specifics on chmoding you can refer to our "chmoding files" help section.
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Free Installs

What Scripts will you install for free?
phpBB, invisionboard, XMB message boards. Any others you are intrested in, just ask.
You Must however, download the current version for yourself to obtain your required license to use this software. (It is also for your benefit when making changes, should you desire to do so, to have these files handy as backups.) Upon "proof" of license we will then install the current version for you. You will be responsable to maintain or customize your own Message Board, as this is intended simply to give you a "Jump start" to a working Message Board.
Once we become more familiar with some others, we will add to this.
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CHMOD & File Permissions

General Info.
When using a UNIX system it is sometimes necessary to change file permissions. This is done using the CHMOD command. There are two different ways to chmod a file. Certain FTP clients such as Cute FTP and WS/FTP Pro allow for a chmoding directly within FTP. To do this you would highlight the file that you want to use, and select from the command menu "change file permissions." There is on option for "manual." This is where you will enter the desired CHMOD. Many other FTP clients will support CHMODing as well, we recommend checking the documentation.
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Reasons for CHMODING
CHMODing files can be done for a variety of reasons. You can CHMOD files to do things such as: mark them executable, give them write permission, restrict access to them, and a variety of other reasons. It is important to note that chmoding is nearly impossible to avoid. If you are trying to run a certain cgi script it could require execute permissions on the script itself, write permissions on a directory, and read on an informational page. Your cgi scripts should contain the proper documentation to inform you of the proper CHMOD's.
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List of CHMOD's and what they mean.
chmod 777 filename The file is available for Read, Write, and Execute for the owner, group, and world.
chmod 755 filename The file is available for Read, Write, and Execute for the owner; and Read and Execute only for the group and world.
chmod 644 filename The file is available for Read and Write for the owner, and Read only for the group and world.
chmod 666 filename The file is available for Read and Write for the owner, group, and world. I wonder if the 666 number is just a coincidence. Anybody can create havoc with your files with this wide-open permission mask.
See our support section for more info.
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